Self-Critic Manny~ As a(n) old(er) writer, I’m always looking for ways to be kind to myself, to hang loose, to mute the voice of my haunting self-criticism that could easily paralyze my thinking if I let its nasty judgments fester and grow in my heart and mind. So familiar has that voice become, I’ve given it a gender and a name: Manny. When he appears, I talk to him —gently, kindly, welcoming him. Sound strange? Well, let me to tell you, befriending Manny rather than fighting him off makes it so much easier for me to send him on his way.

Writing-as-Teacher~ For years now whenever Manny stops by to rattle my confidence, I automatically draw on the wisdom found in, of all earthly powers, an Estonian proverb that I long ago memorized: “Let the work teach you how to do it.” What does that mean? How does it ward off my irritating friend, the speaker who would have me shut down? In truth, I’m not real sure how it works to help me maintain my equilibrium, but it does help. Maybe because those soothing words lead me past Manny and directly back to the writing, inviting me to concentrate only on the emerging text for these precious moments of truly listening to the writing —or whatever task or challenge is at hand for the time being. Maybe it’s a matter of being a thoughtful student of the writing, humbly allowing it to show me what I already know and need and want to learn. Ah, the dynamic of how that proverb settles me down and silences Manny remains a big mystery to me, but all I can say is that it puts me where I like to be: Making sense of the world I inhabit and my place within it by shaping aspects of it into story.

Writing Can Constrict Writing~ Do I then contradict myself when I suggest that sometimes a writer can work way too hard at the task, that struggling with the writing-as-teacher could very well exasperate the teacher, turning it away and silencing its helpful voice?

Well, I once again found myself caught up in this conflict when finishing the final draft of a story I’d been working on for well over a year. When I first happened onto the story, what I found was a fascinating Greek folk —not fairy— tale, curiously titled The Snake Tree, that my colleague Soula Mitakidou and I decided to include in our anthology of twenty Greek tales that bears the title, Folktales from Greece: A Treasury of Delights, (Libraries Unlimited, 2002).

I was no foreigner to the special effects that traditional tales are known for, starting with the rhythmic language, repetitive phrases, and interesting refrains —“the poetics of oral literature,” claims Richard Bauman, created by storytellers who passed the tale along by word of mouth, the intention of teller upon teller upon teller down through the ages being to entertain and edify an audience of one or many (Story, Performance, and Event, Cambridge U, 1986). We like and remember folktales for their stock characters that represent obvious traits or ideas and never reveal subtle personal characteristics; crystal clear themes that rise to the surface with no hidden agenda to be uncovered; and storylines that develop, as renown fantasy writer Philip Pullman puts it, “with a dreamlike speed from even to event” (Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version, Viking, 2012).

When I revisited The Snake Tree some years later I was one again intrigued by its concern for fate, destiny, and loyalty. The tale stayed with me, inviting me to reimagine it as a full-bodied fantasy. Some 15,000 words later, I have a story I will soon let go and send out hopefully to find an audience.

Trying Too Hard Hurts~ Recently, though, I almost lost the tale’s ability to teach me how to write it when I became fiercely tied up in describing my main character. Trying way too hard to make the description “perfect,” I was nearly on the brink of abandoning the entire writing enterprise. Forever.

Flash back. The dilemma that confounded me began the day Donald, my friend and colleague, and the tale’s illustrator and I were navigating our way through the manuscript looking for scenes that would be enlivened with illustration. “By the way,” Donald asked in passing, “have you described what [the main character] Loukas looks like?”

Gasp! Clutch! While I hope I had revealed Loukas through his actions, his temperament, his kindness, and his nearly tragic flaw, never once in the course of this 15,000-word story do I attend to his appearance, neither as a child nor as an adult.

I pondered. I fretted. As though chiding me for my negligence, Loukas refused to make his unique features known to me. I’m not talking here about a writer’s block. No, I’m talking about attempt after attempt after attempt at nurturing into existence an image I could believe in. Loukas is Greek. He lives on an island in the Aegan Sea. He’s a part-time fisherman, and an accomplished flute player. He’s friendly. Does he wear a smile? What else does he wear?

You see, every time I formed him into being, I felt I was creating an unappealing stereotype. Black-haired, bronze-tanned, broad shouldered, mustached Greek fisherman. A Zorba kin. Sigh!

STOP WRITING~ Then, early one morning, I’m reading Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chrödrön, a Buddhist writer whose sound advice has become a guiding light for me as I move through each day. This morning Pema stops me in my writerly tracks with this bolt of advice: “…look at everything and appreciate it. Even if you don’t feel appreciation, just look. Feel what you feel; take an interest and be curious. Write less; don’t try to capture it all on paper. Sometimes writing instead of being a fresh take, is like trying to catch something and nail it down. This capturing blinds us and there’s no fresh look, no wide-open eyes, no curiosity.”

That did it for me. Hang loose. Relax. Take more than a few deep breaths in and out. Step back from the task (whatever it might be). Go for a walk, Pema advises. Sing out loud in the woods, she urges. Release yourself from the temptation to control the writing.

STOP WRITING! ~~for the time being …

RELEASE, RELIEF, RETURN~And then when you return, refreshed, to that divine process of composing, “Let the writing teach you how to do it.”

Now, whenever I step away from my fear of Loukas, he appears from the shadows and let’s me know what he wants to look like. By allowing him to teach me, he’s being much more cooperative. He’s almost fully formed, but only according to his clever suggestions for how he intends to appear before all who will hopefully meet him someday soon.

Poetry encourages us to think in very unusual ways. That’s because poets typically use tight-knit structures to explore whatever topic, sensation, or idea they set out to fathom in their attempt to (re)awaken us, to make us see (more) deeply whatever topic, incident, emotion, or circumstance takes hold of their imaginations. In their explorations, poets more likely than not leave gaps for readers to fill in order to shape the poem’s meaning according to their own unique insights and wanderings. In Sound and Sense: AnIntroduction to Poetry, Laurence Perrine calls up poetry as “a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than ordinary language.” It’s the intensity of a good poem that captivates and even startles, but it’s the same intensity that also moves us to take up the hard but joyful labor of discerning meaning, which is to say, making sense, discovering, and uncovering some remarkable awareness about human experience in all its mundane, extraordinary, extreme, shocking, hopeful manifestation.

“It is difficult to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack of what is found there,” warns William Carlos Williams in “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.”

Poet Williams would surely agree that it’s important, no, crucial, for young adults to be led to poetry that speaks to their needs and concerns and interests, but that also challenges them to move beyond their boundaries and the safety of the familiar. Poems —well-crafted, resonant, suggestive—- have the power to transport us to other times and places, other cultures, and other spiritual and religious convictions. Good poems don’t teach as much as they lay out an experience, a feeling, a desire, a mood —whatever— inviting us, as U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky suggests, to coordinate “body and mind in the creation of meaning” (Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud).

Hearing of mind and body and reading aloud as links to making a poem mean brings me back to the advantages of experiencing poetry through recitation, choral interpretation, drama, and, why not, simple movement and intricate dance. What’s the reward of a mind/body/spirit move through a poem, or for that matter any work of literature? Verlyn Klinkenborg reminds us of what we might gain:

“Reading aloud recaptures the physicality of words. To read with your lungs and diaphragm, with your tongue and lips, is very different than reading with your eyes alone. The language becomes a part of the body…. The words are not mere words. They are the breath and mind, perhaps even the soul, of the person who is reading” )“Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud.” The New York Times, May 16, 2009).

Of course, it’s important to reserve time for our adolescents to get poems to make sense through private, silent reading. But, not always.

Of course, it’s important to reserve time to make our adolescents competent readers by teaching them the habits of “close reading,” that demanding skill of analysis and interpretation that leaves no word and all that lingers between each word unresolved. But, not always.

In truth, there are a few “tried-and-true” practices that will help make teens’ connections with poetry memorable auditory and physical experiences, such as:

*Enthused teachers who introduce a lot of poems that run the gamut of topic, theme, curricular connection, style, and form. Collaborating with their students, teachers can model good read aloud techniques and comprehension/interpretation moves.

*Availability. Working with a school or public librarian, teachers bring into their classrooms a grand supply of poetry books, which their students browse, choosing a few poems they like, and sharing these with peers in small-group reading circles.

*Choice and More Choice. Motivation comes though assignments in different subject areas —particularly, literature and social studies— which allow high school students to integrate poems into specific

assignment requirements. For examples of poetry collections that address topics and themes in the context of social studies, see Gail Bush and Randy Meyer’s Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice, Lori Marie Carlson and Oscar Hijuelos’s Burnt Sugar: Contemporary CubanPoetry in English and Spanish, and Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal, and Ravi Shankar’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetryfrom the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond in the listing that follows.

Teachers and parents remember: “What we learn with pleasure, we never forget.” —Alfred Mercier

Adoff, Arnold. Roots and Blues: A Celebration. Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. Clarion, 2010. As rendered in Adoff’s characteristic “shaped speech” poems and poetic prose, blues music is traced to the brutalities inflicted by slavery, shackles, and chain gangs, and also to poignant memories preserved in shared stories of bondage, release, and freedom, to the unyielding movement of the Mississippi River, to the joy of gathering and making improvisational music with friends, and to the specter of irrepressible hope. Ultimately, the blues linger in lyrics and rhythms that harbor broken hearts, shattered dreams, and loneliness as much as they soothe, sympathize, and speak to survival. As Adoff reminds us in “Sit Up Straight And Sing,” it is the alchemy of the blues’ honesty and integrity that liberates. “Stand up./The blues are in your spine:/hard as shackle steel/ soft as fingers/picking l i n e s from steel strings./…. we sing each morning/sunrise s t r o n g e r than yesterday.” Complementing the exuberance of the poet’s respectful tribute are Christie’s soulful full-color acrylic paintings that, in turn, infuse topic and theme with moments of agony, jubilation, and reverence. A worthy companion is Walter Dean Myers’Blues Journey (Holiday House, 2003).

Alexander, Elizabeth, and Nelson, Marilyn. Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper. Wordsong, 2007. Miss Crandall, a Quaker by faith and education and thus an abolitionist, kept her school open from 1833-34 in Canterbury, Connecticut, until the townspeople, motivated by racism, ransacked the building and set it on fire. The two dozen heartfelt sonnets give voice to Miss Crandall’s students who describe their love of learning, backgrounds, discoveries, and responses to the townspeople’s disapproval. Brought to vivid reality in these poems is the courage to live by the power of trust and a belief in the cause of social justice. An introduction describes the history of the school and Miss Crandall’s commitment, and in appended notes, the authors describe their collaborative writing process.

Angelou, Maya. The Complete Poetry. Random House, 2015. With teens, stop, linger, and wonder at the sheer brilliance of the range of Angelou’s voice, temperament, concern, cause, and ability to shock, startle, and awaken her readers. It’s all here. The exuberance that heightens her celebrations of African American womanhood, the anger and disappointment that give rise to her rumination on racism and the hardships endured by her people, the respect sustained by her reflections on endurance, survival, and redemption, and the hope that gives her the very reason for carryin’ on, persisting, longing for change in the form of equity. With your teens, leave this rich and varied journey cleansed by the power of the Word, of language beautiful, profound, and remarkably accessible. So be it!

Anglesey, Zoë (Ed.). Listen Up!: Spoken Word Poetry. One World/Ballantine, 1999. Into the center of the performance poetry craze, come nine young poets from among the best known and hippest stars of the trade, most of them award-winning slam competitors. What they dish up is soulfully personal (Jessica Care Moore’s “I Am a Work in Progress”), fiercely political (Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie’s “Evolution”), intensely honest (Willie Perdomo’s “no more/123rd St./where I sold dope/for breakfast”), curiously sensual (Suheir Hammad’s “Angels Get No Maps”), and cautiously optimistic (Carl Hancock Rux’s “all the light there is,/and hands and hands and hands, delving.”). Performance generated and performance bound, many of these poems –with their jazz-like riffs, bold cadences, and rap-like movements –are cued to the development of readers theater presentations. The book includes poet biographies and a notes/glossary section keyed to obscure references and foreign word and terms in the poems.

Blum, Joshua, Holman, Bob, and Pellington, Mark (Eds.). The United States of Poetry. Abrams, 1996. Based on the premise that poetry reflects the culture of a nation, the 80 poems in this collection include the works of American Nobel Laureates, rock n’ rollers, Beats, cowboy poets, rappers, and even former presidents. The poems have been organized to explore cultural diversity through such topics as “The Land and the People,” “Day in the Life,” “The American Dream,” “Love and Sex,” “The Word,” and “Portraits.” These are honest, mournful, dark, playful, and often raw poems.

The famous Scopes trial of 1925 comes to life through a chorus of well developed fictional characters as they narrate, in a series of linked free verse poems, the mounting tension and fierce controversy that made the trial a national phenomenon. A high school science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, J. T. Scopes was arrested for having taught Darwin’s theory of evolution in his classroom. Bryant creates a compelling drama from a raging debate among locals including a minister, business proprietors, a law enforcement agent, a religious fanatic, and students. A readers theater in the making.

Bush, Gail and Meyer, Randy (Eds.). Indivisible: Poems for Social Justice. Norwood House, 2013. Because “[a] poem has the ability… to widen the angle through which we view society,” posit the editors, what better way to explore the conditions of social justice in America than through the voices of fifty 20th century poets that capture with fierce honesty the failures and triumphs of the struggle to achieve equity, inclusion, and agency. Conceived of as a journey, the anthology sets off with poems that observe the phenomenon of social justice from a distance (Coleman’s “the ISM,” Rexroth’s “Discrimination,” Shakur’s “Liberty Needs Glasses”). Then, in the second stretch of the journey, the poets offer views and critiques of communities both familiar and unfamiliar to readers (Reed’s “Points of View,” Mora’s “Bilingual Christmas, “Do you hear what I hear?,” Divakaruni’s “Indian Movie, New Jersey,” Mueller’s “Invisibility Poem: Lesbian”). The poems in “Giving Secrets Away,” the third turn in the journey, invite us to fathom the lives of people deeply transformed by exclusion, discrimination, and fear (Okita’s “In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers,” Angelou’s “Harlem Hopscotch,”). Shared experience is the theme that links the poems in “The Signals We Give,” the journey’s fourth movement (Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” Soto’s “Failing in the Presence of Ants,” Oliver’s “Sunrise”). In “The Next Thing to Happen,” we reach the final destination or, rather, a revival of commitment with poems that celebrate human resilience (Rodriguez’s “Piece by Piece”), resistance (Baraka’s “The Last Word”), and the ultimate triumph of the human struggle to achieve mutual respect (Stafford’s “Being a Person”).

Carlson, Lori Marie and Hijuelos, Oscar (Eds.). Burnt Sugar: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish. Free Press, 2006. So write the editors: “In creating this book of twentieth-century poetry written by Cubans of four generations, we hope to convey to an American audience something of the very particular life experiences of those who share Cuban heritage.” The collection is filled with seduction as well as prayer, death plus joy, beauty, and pain; and these extremes on the scale of life experiences are perfectly balanced and often expressed in transcendently lyrical language.

Chang, Tina, Handal, Nathalie, and Shankar, Ravi (Eds.). Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. Norton, 2008. The editors of this massive anthology set out to explore a response to the 9/11 debacle that would demonstrate the power of language, specifically, the language of poetry, to shape a vision of a contemporary world view in contrast to a vision shaped by the specter of further violence and a clash of cultures. The result of their search is an unprecedented gathering of poems that awaken the heart and mind to a shared world-wide political and personal consciousness as well as to culturally specific aspirations, beliefs, and dogmas. The volume resonates with the artistic, cultural, and political voices of more than 400 mostly Asian poets representing East, South, and Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the United States. The editors have gathered the poets’ reflections on the human condition around nine intriguing themes described in section introductions: “In the Grasp of Childhood Fields,” “Parsed into Colors,” “Slips and Atmospherics,” “Earth of Drowned Gods,” “Buffaloes Under Dark Water,” “Apostrophe in the Scripture,” “This House, My Bones,” “Bowl of Air and Shivers,” and “The Quivering World.” Among the features with which the anthology concludes are a country index and a language list. What a fantastic and timely contribution to our understanding of Eastern peoples and their cultures and contemporary literature!

Collins, Billy (Ed.) 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. Random House, 2005. Product Description: Inspired by Billy Collins’s poem-a-day program for American high schools that he began through the Library of Congress, the original Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry is a gathering of clear, contemporary poems aimed at a wide audience. In 180 More, Collins continues his ambitious mission of exposing readers of all ages to the best of today’s poetry. Here are another 180 hospitable, engaging, reader-friendly poems, offering surprise and delight in a wide range of literary voices–comic, melancholy, reflective, irreverent. If poetry is the original travel literature, this anthology contains 180 vehicles ready to carry you away to unexpected places.

Espada, Martin (Ed.). El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry. U of Massachusetts, 1997. Former farm workers and gang members, a physician, an ex-tenant lawyer, a professional chef, a Vietnam war veteran, and many others, both well-established (Gary Soto, Pat Mora, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Sandra Cisneros) and lesser-known younger poets, contribute to this temperamental and sometimes raucous tribute to Latino/a experiences. Their voices resonate anger, pride, the indignity of racism, protest, and the desire for cultural preservation and integration in sonnets, ballads, prose poems, free verse, and other expressive forms. Together they illustrate a culturally-conscious poetry, both complex and diverse, sensuous and lyrical, evocative and profound. Think chorus, think readers theater.

Franco, Betsy, (Ed.). You Hear Me? Poems and Writings by Teenage Boys. Photographs by Nina Nickles. Candlewick, 2001. In mostly free-verse poems and brief narratives, teens from diverse cultures and backgrounds speak frankly and from the heart, often with raw imagery and provocative voices, about the perils of navigating the frequently harsh challenges that make adolescence such a precarious human condition. Not surprisingly, the concerns these young men lay bare center on identity, relationships, sex, drugs, AIDS, family, rejection, loss, and survival. There’s a surprising and welcomed vulnerability to their honest revelations, an urgency to their hopes and dreams, and a vibrancy to their desire for a fulfilling life.

Franco, Betsy, (Ed.). Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writings by Teenage Girls. Photographs by Nina Nickles. Candlewick, 2001. A revealing mix of poetry and prose offers a deeply poignant interpretation of lives lived with a keen sense of the vigilance needed to survive adolescent angst. Empowered with the sheer energy of their convictions, the young women assembled here explore their fears, disappointments, relationships won and lost, dreams, aspirations, longings, and, ultimately, the integrity and self-respect that help them to stay the course as they remain true to their belief in human decency. Gritty language enhances the realism and honesty of their discoveries.

Greenberg, Jan, (Ed.). Side by Side: New Poems Inspired by Art from Around the World. Abrams, 2008. Here we have a kaleidoscope of poetic voices from thirty-three countries and six continents inspired by classical, modern, and contemporary art. The poems, which were written or translated especially for this anthology, are gathered into four thematic sections based upon the type of response the art evokes in the poet. In “Stories,” the poet discovers a storyline in the art. In “Voices,” the poet writes from the perspective of a character seen in the art. In “Expressions,” the poems reveal the intensity of the poets’ interaction with the art objects. In “Impressions,” the poets focus on the art itself by attending to the artists’ elements of composition. Superbly designed, the book includes brief biographies of the poets, translators, and artists, and a full-page colorful map of the world that shows where the poets, translators, and artists live or lived.

Hopkins, Lee Bennett, (Ed.). America at War. Illustrated by Stephen Alcorn. Margaret K. McElderry, 2008. In this carefully crafted anthology, raw sentiments are brought to life in more than fifty poems and a host of haunting watercolors that span the devastating power of eight wars, from the Revolutionary War to the Iraq War. Esteemed poets such as Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and e. e. cummings express their vision alongside newer poets such as Sara Holbrook, J. Patrick Lewis, and Rebecca Kai Dotlich.

Paul B. Janeczko’s stirring new collection of poems goes inside the walls of the notorious camp to portray the indomitable spirit of those incarcerated there.

Hitler hailed Terezín (Theresienstadt) as a haven for artistic Jews, when in reality the Czech concentration camp was little more than a way station to the gas chambers. In his second book inspired by devastating history, acclaimed poet Paul B. Janeczko gives voice to this heartrending creative community: its dignity, resilience, and commitment to art and music in the face of great brutality. The many memorable characters he conjures include a child who performs in the camp’s now famed production of Brundibár, a man who lectures on bedbugs, and a boy known as “Professor,” who keeps a notebook hidden in his shoe. Accented with dramatic illustrations by prisoners, found after WW II, Janeczko’s spare and powerful poems convey Terezín’s tragic legacy on an intimate, profoundly moving scale. (Tony Manna adds: There is a captivating picture book version of the opera Brundibár retold by Tony Kushner and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, Michael Di Capua/Hyperion, 2003, titled Brundibar.)

Lewis, J. Patrick. Freedom Like Sunlight: Praisesongs for Black Americans. Illustrated by John Thompson. Mankato, MN: Creative Editions, 2000. In these compact, image-rich, rhyming poems accompanied by Thompson’s radiant artwork, Lewis celebrates thirteen African Americans who remain legends because of their unique contributions in making the world a better place. Lewis and Thompson honor entertainers such as Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (“…sang my songs like sand on gravel…”), Marian Anderson (“In colors/Beautiful/And strong,/She brushed/The air…/And painted song.”), and Billie Holiday (“Her bittersweet songs told Heartbreak,/Meet your sister Pain,/But Lady melted yesterdays/Into beautiful rain.”). They sing and paint the praises of sports superstars such as Jesse Owens (“The Fuhrer looked away without seeing/the man jump over Germany,/jump beyond hope and gravity,…farther than any other human being would jump/for the next twenty-five years.”), Leroy “Satchel” Paige (“Out of a windmill windup,/the whipcord arm grooves a dartball/on a sting past the hopeful, waiting/at the plate for a miracle….”), and Wilma Rudolph (“And there are those who saw her run/Who still remember well:/In Paris, France,/She was Black Pearl,/In Rome, the Black Gazelle.”). Their roster of renowned individuals who challenged established social norms include Sojourner Truth (“I go on preaching freedom’s fire,/Children, hear my cry./It ain’t for sale and it ain’t for hire,/Children, hear my cry….”), Martin Luther King, Jr. (“I hear the shot,/I feel the pain…./Who bravely fought/Must fight again.”), and Malcolm X (“Today the day holds on against the night,/Because the fight for justice has begun.”). Appended “Biographical Notes” fill in the details implied in the poems and Thompson’s portraits, group scenes, and still lifes.

Marsalis, Wynton. Jazz A-B-Z: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits. Illustrated by Paul Rogers. Candlewick, 2005. Marsalis and Rogers celebrate jazz greats in alphabetical order from Louis Armstrong to Dizzy Gillespie, each musician revealed in a distinctive poetic form designed to characterize each musician’s unique personality, talent, and commitment to their career and fans. Thus, John Coltrane comes alive in a list poem, Duke Ellington in meter play, Sarah Vaughan in a sonnet, Billie Holiday in a lyric poem, and Dizzy Gillespie in skeltonic verse. Further enhancing the appeal and information are prose biographical sketches of the musicians, “Notes on the Poetic Forms,” and a discography of “26 Jazz Records You Will Enjoy,” all of which conclude the volume. A book to be pored over and revisited many times for the love of music and inspiration. Many voices waiting to be performed readers theater style.

Nelson, Marilyn. A Wreath for Emmett Till. Illustrated by Philippe Lardy. Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Nelson forms her remembrance of teen-age Till’s 1955 lynching in a heroic crown of fifteen interlinked sonnets. In this format, the last line of one sonnet is the first line of the next sonnet sometimes in slightly different wording, and the final sonnet is comprised of each first line of all the preceding sonnets. Yet, the formality of the form, the language, and the constant literary and historical allusions never lessen the emotional impact of the poet’s gripping exploration of the horrific incidents surrounding Till’s death and the dreadful social and cultural issues that ignited such hatred. Nelson’s introduction—“How I Came to Write This Poem”—her appended notes about Emmett Till, and her description of the rationale and allusions underpinning the sonnets further strengthen the impact of a searing reading experience. Lordy assists with a helpful explanation of the logic behind his symbolic paintings of the natural world tainted by strokes of foreboding.

Nye, Naomi Shihab (Ed.). What Have You Lost? Photographs by Michael Nye. Greenwillow, 1999. One hundred and forty poets, some well known (William Stafford, Lucille Clifton, Pat Mora, and Maggie Anderson) and some published here for the first time, a few in translation, speak from the heart about loss and recovery. In these deeply moving poems, loss ranges from the commonplace (wallet, glove, memory) to the utterly shattering (brother, friend, relationship, husband). Often, though, sadness and regret and grief are transformed by the solace of memory and resignation tempered by spirituality and belief. We can survive and carry on—however changed we may forever be by the experience!

Paschen, Elise and Raccah, Dominique (Eds.). Poetry Speaks Who I Am: Poems of Discovery, Inspiration, Independence, and Everything Else. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2010. More than 100 classic and contemporary poems navigate the meaning of personal and social identity with passion, compassion, humor, uncertainty, bewilderment, and longing. Alongside Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost, readers meet up with Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Alexander, Lucille Clifton, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Marilyn Nelson —many fine poets who explore friendship, family, love, desire, heartbreak, and contentment. Adding to the book’s attraction are the CD with forty-four of the poets reading their own work and the comforting design that invites readers to take their time searching for poems that attract and offer something to live by.

by Edward S.Curtis. Viking, 1996. Through this compelling gathering of sixty translated prayers, chants, and songs, readers discover the spiritual beliefs of representatives from more than fifty Native American nations. Gleaned from sources published between 1889 and 1968, the pieces are arranged in a circle, from one dawn to another, in recognition of the Native belief—offered here by Black Elk— ‘“…that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.”’ In some sections, a transparent theme or topic underpins a cluster of poems. Prayer itself binds several pieces that open the anthology. Later, the spirit of rain and nature’s animism are the links that connect “The Wind Blows from the Sea,” “Invocation to the Rainmakers,” and “The Mockingbird’s Song,” each poem driven in thought and rhythm by anticipation of a coming, saving rain. In other sections, the one, for example, sustained by reverence for nature’s gift, the manner is more mysterious and, thus, more opaque, as in this Hidatsa song: “I am simply on the earth,/Need I be afraid?” For all their minimalism, these poems resonate far-reaching meditations on the human condition and the blessed interconnectedness of humankind and all that gives the universe its substance. Alongside each poem is a captivating duotone photograph by acclaimed photographer Edward S. Curtis whose countless photographs, taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, helped to preserve the dignity of a host of Native peoples. This is a book to be pored over with students as they fathom Native history, lore, and cultural contribution.

Pinsky, Robert, (Ed.). Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud. Norton, 2009. This is a collection everyone will want to return to time and again! Pinsky, former U.S. Poet Laureate, has assembled a dynamic assortment of more than 400 poems that spans centuries (16th to the 21st), invites delight and wonder, and appeals to a broad range of taste, interest, and degree of sophistication. The seven sections into which the poems have been cleverly arranged according to form and what Pinsky calls “principles,” exhibit “Short Lines, Frequent Rhymes,” “Long Lines, Strophes, Parallelisms,” “Ballads, Repetitions, Refrains,” “Love Poems,” “Stories,” “Odes, Complaints, and Celebrations, and “Parodies, Ripostes, Jokes, and Insults.” Within this vast territory, John Donne keeps company with Emily Dickinson; Theodore Roethke with May Swenson; Shakespeare with Rita Dove; and Christina Rossetti with Allen Ginsberg. Generous introductions speak to the pleasures of experiencing a poem in tandem with unobtrusive analysis, the rewards of reading aloud, and poetic technique, and an accompanying CD features Pinsky reading a selection of the poems. There’s something for everyone in this treasury of delicious delights.

April is National Poetry Month, and that makes the month an especially good time for you to saunter off toyour local library to grab a few of themany wonderful poetry collections that crowd the children’s book market these days and spend some time each day reading poems with the kids you know that speak to their interests, experiences, and imaginations. Make the reading an enjoyable experience, one so appealing that kids will be hooked on poetry for the rest of their lives!

Let that enjoyment begin early on by sharing poems that have something to say to young children as they navigate their preschool experiences and make their way through the primary elementary school grades. In the following collections, there are bound to be any number of poems that will delight young children and their adult allies. And with so many poems to choose from, bypass the ones that don’t excite, move on, and find ones that do!

In my future poetry alerts, I will be working my way up the age ladder, drawing your attention to collections that have the potential to make poetry meaningful throughout childhood and into adulthood. Along the way, I’ll describe some of the techniques we can draw on to make poetry come alive whenever we set out to share poetry in meaningful ways.

Davies, Nicola. Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature. Illustrated by Mark Hearld. Candlewick, 2012. Moving through a year of seasons, Davies and Hearld offer observations and information about the natural world as well as reflections, short narratives, and suggestions to help children enjoy nature’s constant changes. Hearld’s paper-cut collages, woodcuts, and other mixed-media techniques, complement the album of ideas, images, and moods created by Davies’s evocative poetry. Science meets poetry and poetry meets science through rich images and thoughtful poems. Each reading deepens the experience in word, picture, and heartfelt reflection.

Hopkins, Lee Bennett, (Ed.). Cimb Into My Lap: First Poems to Read Together. Illustrated by Kathryn Brown. Simon & Schuster, 1998. The eight sections into which Hopkins has arranged a selection of more than fifty gentle poems are tuned to the young child’s curiosity and growing recognition of the folks and experiences that define his or her world. Thus, the poets fathom whimsy (“Worlds of Make-Believe’), relationships (“Some People”), self (“Me!” and “Little Hands and Fingers—Little Toes and Feet”), and the security of home and caring family (“Good Night”) —topics tenderly illuminated with Brown’s affectionate watercolors.

The poets range from classical (Eugene Field, Sir James M. Barrie, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll) and modern (David McCord, Charlotte Zolotow, Nancy Willard, Karla Kuskin) to contemporary (Deborah Chandra, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Mary Ann Hoberman), and all of their offerings are gifts to be read aloud. A worthy companion to Hopkins’s Side by Side: Poems to Read Together (Simon & Schuster, 1988).

Lewis, J. Patrick (Ed.). National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry: 200 Poems with Photographs That Squeak, Soar, and Roar. National Geographic, 2012. The 200 mostly short poems cover a delightful range of classic and contemporary poets, including Robert Louis Stevenson (“The Cow”), Walter de la Maré (“A Warbler”), Lewis Carroll (“The Crocodile”), Benjamin Franklin (“Butterfly”), Maxine Kumin (“The Horses”), Jack Prelutsky (“The Walrus”), and J. Patrick Lewis (“How to Tell a Camel”). Impressive, as well, is the range in form and style, including limerick, haiku, shape poetry, free verse, and rhymed verse, with the poems thoughtfully categorized by the characteristics and traits of the animals represented such as “the big ones,” “the little ones,” “the winged ones,” “the water ones,” “the strange ones,” “the noisy ones,” and “the quiet ones.” Stunning, full-bleed photographs capture and the variety, beauty, and peculiarity of these fascinating creatures. A book to pore over…and over…and over again.

Mannis, Celeste Davidson. One Leaf Rides the Wind: Counting in a Japanese Garden. Illustrated by Susan Kathleen Hurting. Puffin, 2005. A kimono-attired child guides readers through a traditional Japanese garden. Meditative haiku and lush jewel-toned pictures reveal the tranquility of the garden and the wonder of the eleven items the gracious child observes and explores.

Mora, Pat. Confetti: Poems for Children. Illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez. New York: Lee & Low, 1996. Free verse poems celebrate the rhythms and uniqueness of the Southwest and its culture as seen through the eyes of a Mexican-American girl. Many Spanish words are interwoven into the verses and translated in a glossary at the book’s end. Acrylic illustrations, rendered in hot colors reflecting the sun, their swirling, dreamlike patterns suggest the vastness of the land and the freedom of its inhabitants.

Muth, Jon J. Hi, Koo! A Year of Seasons. Scholastic, 2014. In twenty-six haiku —each a variation from the traditional five-seven-five syllable form —the lovable panda Koo, at first alone and later joined by an alert boy and girl, romps through the seasons savoring each unique experience that nature offers him and his companions. The palette of the quiet watercolor-and-ink pictures changes to reflect the contrasting moods and textures that each season holds in store. In an author note, Muth encourages readers to follow “an alphabetical path through the book by following the capitalized words in each haiku.” Readers first met Koo in Muth’s Zen Ties (Scholastic, 2008).

Prelutsky, Jack. I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus. Illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic. New York: Greenwillow, 2012. What a romp! Offered here are more than 100 silly and downright hilarious poems mostly about animals, some real-with-a-twist (an elephant that’s artistically talented, an octopus that’s great at multitasking) and others strangely imagined (a wiguana, gludu, appleopard). The bottom line? Look closely, use your imagination, and you’ll find humor all around you. Haiku, rhymed verse, shape poems, and an occasional limerick add variety, and Ubanovic’s whimsical black-and-white line drawings serve up a steady beat of pun, slapstick, and farce. A call to action for read alouds, oral interpretation, and readers theater.

Prelutsky, Jack (Ed.). The Random House Book of Poetry for Children.Illustrated by Arnold Lobel. Random House, 1983. There’s something of interest and delight for every child among five hundred poems that are divided into child-friendly subject areas such as living things, home, seasons, domestic and wild animals, and children themselves. There are classic poems by Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Lewis Carroll, and others, along with modern and contemporary verse by Shel Silverstein, David McCord, Mary Ann Hoberman, and Karla Kuskin, all told in a diversity of form, tone, and mood. Lobel’s upbeat drawings fill the entire volume with lively, quirky drama and an offbeat, somewhat radical attention to childhood imagination.

Salas, Laura Purdie. Water Can Be …. Illustrated by Violeta Dabija. Millbrook, 2014. With the aid of softly textured art work that feels like a meditation, the poet describes water’s many functions in rhyming pairs while also exploring water’s effects on the environment and, ultimately, on our lives. The poems are rendered in brief inventive, thought-provoking metaphors that encourage discussion and could lead to a guided writing activity. The author/illustrator pair have also collaborated on A Leaf Can be … (Millbrook, 2012), which also offers fascinating observations of the natural world.

Yolen, Jane, and Peters, Andrew Fusek (Eds.). Here’s a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry. Illustrated by Polly Dunbar. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2007. EC~ An over-sized, spacious anthology of more than 60 small poems arranged into four categories that cover four significant features of the very young child’s world: “Me, Myself, and I,” “Who Lives In My House?,” “I Go Outside,” and “Time for Bed.” These are well crafted poems by some of the most outstanding children’s poets, including Nikki Grimes, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Rosemary Wells, Jack Prelutsky, and Lillian Moore. While many of the children depicted in the mixed-media illustrations appear happy and contented as they dance, romp, gesture, and play together, others are seen in the throes of anger, jealousy, and tantrum. It’s all good, real, rhythmic, and entertaining poetry that’s bound to amuse babies, infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and the kindergarten set over and over and over again. Giving voice to the poems with kids this young can be a first step toward readers theater experiences. To continue the spell, try Yolen and Peters’s Switching on the Moon: A Very First Book of Bedtime Poems (Candlewick, 2010).

Browse your local library shelves where you find folk- and fairy tales and you’’ll soon discover that the majority of such stories are, according to book covers, “retold” by their authors. Now I don’t mean to sound like some fussy old nitpicker, but I’m here to tell you that to call me a “reteller” in my role as an oral storyteller and folklore author and to label what I labor to write a “retelling” surely misses the mark when it comes to describing the effort, awareness, and technique that I must draw on when the goal is to tell a story that entertains as much as it reveals human joys and sorrows, fears and courage, defeats and triumphs. This notion of “retelling” makes it seem that the folklore author or oral teller is taking the traditional tale or legend or verse and simply repeating most or all of it just as it was found. Not much work there. Maybe a little tidying up. Perhaps adding some drama to a conflict to make the story more appealing. What about letting those characters talk to one another when they meet up on that highway. And then there’s tightening the storyline with a little less description to move the tale along more quickly. Now, while any constructive alteration is bound to upgrade the tale or legend’s power, deep organic changes are what’s needed to build a good story. As it turns out, the act of breathing new life into these ancient narratives is not so much a matter of retelling them as it is of transforming them, or if a “re” must be in the equation, of “reinventing” whether as a writer or performer.

The process always starts with wandering around the tale. Spend a good amount of time getting to know the characters and you soon discover that however one-dimensional they seem given their folklore nature, they still trade in motivations, desires, challenges, and conflicts. Follow the events that carry these characters from here to there and beyond and you find that however quickly a tale moves along —by its folklore nature— free of the kind of details found in a novel or short story or, for that matter, a picture book, stuff does happen to keep the narrative moving and the characters suffering, learning, failing, surviving, and more often than not, living happily ever after. Linger awhile inside the tale and catch its rhythm, which sometimes suggests the cadence of an oral storyteller who fills the tale with traces of an earnest resonating voice. To bring that voice —the teller’s performance— to the page for the sake of keeping vibrant the tale’s long-standing oral heritage is one of the most pressing challenges for the folk- or fairy tale writer.

My coauthor Soula Mitakidou and I faced this challenge and my others when we wrote “The Orphan, A Cinderella Story from Greece,” which Schwartz & Wade Books/Random House published as a picture book with illustrations by Giselle Potter. The tale features a beloved daughter who becomes an orphan when her mother suddenly dies, for as people in Greece believe, “A child becomes an orphan when she loses her mother.” This quietly shrewd kid draws on her ingenuity and the gracious help of Mother Nature to free herself from a nasty stepmother and win back fortune’s blessings which sets her on a path to a happy future. In an early episode, the orphan becomes so upset over her predicament, she flees to her mother’s grave one moon-lit night to plead for release from the stepmother’s cruelty. In our very first reading of the tale, we translated into English the rhymed couplets the writer had used in the Greek version on which we roughly based our telling.

Our translation of the graveyard episode took this form:

In her despair one night, to her mother’s grave she fled

And in her darkest hour clawed the earth until her fingers bled.

“Oh mother dear, get up, get up and listen to my plea,

I have a stranger for a mother, I beg you, comfort me!

And strangers have I for sisters too whose harsh words burn my heart.

So, mother dear, take pity on me, a victim of cruel art”

At these cries the mother’s grave did tremble and quake

Startled, the girl stood breathless, and not a sound did make

“Go, my child, go to good, don’t cry and don’t complain!

Your sorrow weighs heavily on me; your pain is my pain.

Go, my child, go to good, keep your heart pure and kind

Soon your every wish will be yours to find.”

While we abandoned our early attempt to write the tale in rhymed couplets because we felt the repetitive musical cadence made our writing monotonous, we liked the dramatic tension and mystical aura the verse gave the graveyard episode and decided to work up a verse rendition of it, hoping the verse style would amp up the intensity of the orphan’s passionate encounter with her mother.

Many revisions later and with crucial guidance offered by Anne Schwartz, editor extraordinaire, the graveyard episode morphed into this interpretation that made it into the published picture book:

One night, the poor orphan fled to her mother’s grave. Throwing herself on the ground, she cried:

“Oh, Mother, dear Mother,

Listen to my plea!

A stranger tries to take your place,

But does not care for me.

Her daughters call me ‘sister’ now,

But are heartless as can be.

Oh, Mother, dear Mother,

I beg you, set me free!”

At once, the grave trembled, and the mother’s voice rose from the earth:

“Go, my child, go to good,

With all my blessings, go!

Your sorrow weighs upon my heart,

Your pain, it wounds me so.

Go, my child, go to good,

Don’t cry and don’t despair.

Go home, my soul, and wait to find

True fortune’s blessings there.”

And so, holding close her mother’s words, the orphan followed the moon’s path home.

If our revised episode demonstrates anything of value about the process of reimagining a tale, it concerns the risk that went into taking raw material that meandered across the page in erratic verse and breathing into it a sensible rhythm that attempted to capture something of the oral teller’s presence.

Even riskier was our characterization of the orphan. We decided to give her the option to step out of the traditional role in which she waits patiently to be rescued by a prince. Many of the Greek Cinderellas we met stayed in their place at home submissive to their destiny as women and unable to take the initiative to decide their fate. Unlike these characters, our orphan emerges as a self-determined young woman who takes it upon herself to go and find her rescuer.

We keep discovering that the joy of our work with the tales comes from taking each step along the way determined to allow the source tale to teach us how to reinvent it. That’s the joy alright, but it’s also the challenge we love to take up.

Today’s writing prompt: He hadn’t seen her since the day they left high school.

There’s no way I would have come close to retelling or writing culturally authentic Greek folk- and fairy tales without the guidance of Soula Mitakidou, my Greek colleague, who led me through the inner sanctum of Greek culture. As we searched through hundreds of tales, looking for ones that attracted us and held promise for readers in the English-speaking world, we often sat at the same desk or computer in Thessaloniki, Greece, with Soula interpreting the tales we were translating into English, providing cultural contexts for them, showing how they expressed past and present cultural values and beliefs, and demonstrating how traditions still to this day serve as bonds uniting the Greek people.

You need a few examples of the cultural characteristics I took hold of once Soula and I were deep into the process of working through a batch of tales, don’t you? Take “Mirsina,” a tale in our anthology of twenty stories, Folktales from Greece: A Treasury of Delights (Linworth/Libraries Unlimited). “Mirsina” is a good example of a supernatural tale that is both universal in its themes and specific to its culture. In this story, the personification of the sun demonstrates a distinctive feature of Greek folktales, namely, the use of celestial elements to assist a character encountering life’s predicaments. What I learned from Soula is that the close relationship between mortals and celestial bodies in Greek tales can be explained by the fascinating folk belief that every individual is assigned a star that accompanied him or her throughout life. A person’s life begins and ends at this star, which means that every individual is guaranteed a preordained origin and a destination. You meet up with celestial characters that come to the aid of the young protagonist in our most recent picture book, The Orphan: A Cinderella Story from Greece (schwartz & wade/Random House).

Ah, here’s another distinct characteristic of Greek tales I learned along the way. It’s this: The harmonious blend of the ancient and the contemporary, the secular and the religious. For instance, the reference to the number forty in several stories in our anthology, namely, “Anthousa, Xanthousa, Chrisomalousa,” “The Crab,” and “Brother and Sister,” can be tied to the Biblical story of Noah or Christ’s test in the desert for forty days and nights. In contemporary Greece, it is customary for folks to fast for forty days before Christmas and Easter, and families take their newborns to church to be blessed forty days after they are born.

A similar element that is a remnant of ancient tradition is the reference to a loved one as “my soul,” which, in the anthology, appears in “The Axe and Yannis,” and “The Goat Girl.” This, I discovered, is a very common expression in everyday conversations in contemporary Greece and can be traced to the ancient story of Cupid and Psyche, the literary form of which first appeared in The Golden Ass by Lucius Apuleius in the second century, C. E. Today, Cupid, representing love, and Psyche, representing the soul —as they did in ancient times— still symbolize everlasting love —yes, indeed, as can be seen by the numerous images of the couple that appear, for instance, in Valentine’s Day paraphernalia.

Okay, so there you have a few cultural elements that keep the cultural integrity of Greek tales intact. And now you see that anytime you or I, the foreigner, come across tales you love in a culture not your own, then the telling/writing of these tales begins with the challenge of vigorously navigating your way into the beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, that is, the ancient and contemporary contexts, that make that culture tick.

What more is there to say about the process of translating raw folk narratives into acceptable stories that make sense? Stay tuned …

Today’s writing prompt: Weave a tale that begins, “Once upon a bygone time, there lived a king and his three sons, and all three wanted …”

As a writer, I’ve been working in folk- and fairy tale mode for quite a few years now. Tales from Greek traditions. How did I get there, and why am I staying there for the interim?

Well, as it happened I was working in a Greek university in the mid-1990s and that assignment led me into a Greek kindergarten in the university’s child development center. I was welcomed into that room by two talented teachers who granted me a carte blanche to carry on a research project among those perky kids, my intention being to explore their literacy development, which is to say, how they grow into using language to learn how to navigate their experiences and come to make sense of the world, themselves, and others, given the “proper” conditions, of course. Lo and behold, when it came to daily story time in that room, the foreign guy with very limited Greek language skill over there—namely, me— joined joyful teacher-led sessions that brought to life gorgeously-illustrated picture books and traditional songs and dances that got all of us singing and line-dancing around the room! Now during those story times —with my language skills improving— I would sometimes find myself following the tried-and-true plot of a dramatic Greek myth. I heard Zeus, Demester, Atlas, Helios, Athena, Artemis, Icarus, and I witnessed their exploits and shenanigans.

But then, at other story sessions, I’m being welcomed into a fascinating story world filled with distressed virgins, belching giants, rival stepmothers, charming princes, confused brothers, liberated sisters, wise and witty daughters, wretched goblins, mysterious talking spirits, celestial beings visiting earthlings, animated cauldrons, powerful witches, and ghastly ghosts, and, of course, the promise of living happily ever after or at least somewhat better. What are they reading? I ask. Our folk and fairy tales, I’m told.

Well, let me tell you something I know for sure. Survey children’s and teens’ lit in the U S of A and you’ll find all sorts of Greek myths in all sorts of formats, from picture books to heavy-duty collections, but look for Greek folk- and fairy tales and you’ll find a wasteland. And thus began the Greek folklore project with my Greek colleague, Professor Soula Mitakidou, our intention being pure and maybe not quite so simple, given the competitive nature of the publishing world: to bring Greek folk- and fairy tales to children and teens here at home (even though folk materials of any kind were never invented to kindle only the imagination of kids).

And so, off we gladly go into the public domain, searching through folklore archives, collections, internet sites, and the like for these deceptively simple, wise, often brutally violent tales, these magical, mysterious, spellbinding, supernatural, often bizarre and absurd stories filled to the brim with human struggle, survival, betrayal, trickery, hope, enduring love (as in the “happily ever after” brand) and, oh, of course, given the human need for comic relief, there is a huge offering of humorous tales showcasing foolish characters in zany predicaments.

We gather tales that particularly attract us and hold promise for young readers, as well. And then what happens? Stay tuned … the work begins.

Today’s writing prompt: Weave a brief story around this Swahili proverb: “Charity is a matter of the heart, not the pocket.”